This is something I am definitely planning for a fantasy game exactly as I've described. I'm getting quite excited about it, and hopefully I can bring all my filmmaking and acting experience to bear to make it a real cinematic experience.
Exactly as you say with the nodes. Sort of based on those FF gamebooks. Just like making a decision and turning to a new page, or rolling a dice and going to a new page - each passage would be a semi-scripted game sequence, and hopefully the effect would be quite seamless. Or alternatively, at a given point you're asked what your intentions are, and then a scripted sequence of events is created based on that. Branching storylines, but also converging storylines... Maybe your path to a particular scene is different so you come into it with different items/experience/allies and this changes how you play THAT scene which in turn gives different branching outcomes.
I'm toying with some more advanced conversations too, inspired a bit by the old game Captain Blood. You have a vocabulary, and you can pick a sequence of words like WHERE BLACKSMITH? and if the character has that knowledge and chooses to give it to you, they do. Somewhere between Oblivion/Deus Ex and those programs that supposedly recognise things you type in.
Exactly as you say with the nodes. Sort of based on those FF gamebooks. Just like making a decision and turning to a new page, or rolling a dice and going to a new page - each passage would be a semi-scripted game sequence, and hopefully the effect would be quite seamless. Or alternatively, at a given point you're asked what your intentions are, and then a scripted sequence of events is created based on that. Branching storylines, but also converging storylines... Maybe your path to a particular scene is different so you come into it with different items/experience/allies and this changes how you play THAT scene which in turn gives different branching outcomes.
I'm toying with some more advanced conversations too, inspired a bit by the old game Captain Blood. You have a vocabulary, and you can pick a sequence of words like WHERE BLACKSMITH? and if the character has that knowledge and chooses to give it to you, they do. Somewhere between Oblivion/Deus Ex and those programs that supposedly recognise things you type in.